


Native Tongue

by KingsAndSaints



Series: Ace Prompts [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Dyslexic Steve Harrington, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Graysexual Steve Harrington, M/M, Neurodiverse Steve Harrington, POV Billy Hargrove, Semi-Verbal, communication problems, tics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:53:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingsAndSaints/pseuds/KingsAndSaints
Summary: Ace prompt 55: "Are you purring?"for trans-siberian-marching-band/thinger-strange on tumblr//In which Steve has a particular way of communicating and Billy tries to crack the code.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: Ace Prompts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813483
Comments: 20
Kudos: 261





	Native Tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ezra_mara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezra_mara/gifts).



Words had never been Steve’s friend. Whether he had to speak or write them, they just didn’t seem to cooperate. He was a fine conversationalist, that was not the issue. The first time he had admitted to Billy that he struggled with language, Billy hadn’t quite believed him. He knew that reading was a pain for Steve, but talking had never seemed like a problem. He got along with anyone he met, quick-witted, hyper-social even. No one would suspect that a full sentence could feel like a victory to Steve, that he sometimes struggled to fathom his thoughts into coherent speech.

Billy told him that  
‘everyone feels anxious about being misunderstood’ and  
‘we all struggle to find the right word sometimes’,

‘That’s normal’.

Those remarks were always met with a quiet look of resignation. Steve would try to explain that this was _different_ , that he felt different, well aware of the layers of irony when he failed to be convincing.

It wasn’t until they got closer that Billy noticed the slip-ups, the lingering pauses, how Steve could be drained by a long day or a big social event. Sometimes it seemed as if they were having two separate conversations where neither person knew what the other was talking about. Steve got choppy, stuttered, used blunt three-word-sentences that got under Billy’s skin.

“What did I do?” Billy asked one night on their drive home when Steve was being particularly quiet.

“Nothing,” Steve replied in a strained tone of voice. He hadn’t said a word since they’d left the parking lot. The dark road ahead of them was only interrupted one every so often by the odd street light, small yellow dots that grew exponentially bigger as they drove by. 

“Then _why_ are you snapping at me?” Billy didn’t deal well with conflict. He got antsy and defensive, had a tendency to lash out. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said after a pause. His cadence was off, as if he was blindly throwing the words at a dartboard and failed to hit the proper inflection.

“Don’t be sorry,” Billy snapped back. “Just _tell me_ why the fuck you’re _mad at me!”_ Steve melted into his seat. 

“I’m not mad.” 

“Okay, well don’t act like it then!” 

That didn’t help. Steve stared at the road, bleary-eyed for the rest of the way home. 

It was not like these were regular occurrences. Most days, Steve was his usual happy bubbly self - and sure, he stumbled through sentences from time to time but that happens to everyone, Billy told himself. The only times when they properly struggled were when Steve tried to talk about his feelings or communicate his needs. The sentences just became… word soup. The individual words were there, but the structure, the coherence, the _meaning_ was completely lost. Steve’s anxiety only fed off the look of confusion in Billy’s eyes, which made the hassle and the stuttering worse. Billy would try his best to follow, to understand, but anytime he asked Steve to repeat something or clarify, he flustered and shrunk into himself.

“No, whatever,” he’d tell his shoes. “It’s stupid.”

Once those words were uttered, once Steve decided ‘it’ - or rather _he -_ was stupid, there was no talking him out of it. He’d given up for the day. His eyes got that unseeing, silent-screaming look to them. Every mean word from parents and teachers seemed to join together into a big impermeable wall that made it not only impossible for him to reach out but also prevented anything from coming in. Sometimes Billy had to repeat himself up to three times before Steve would even recognize that Billy was talking to him. Responding was an entirely different challenge.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a native language,” he said one night on the couch when Billy had finally managed to coax Steve out of his shell. His eyes were still distant, but at least he was talking again, at least he seemed somewhat comforted by Billy’s hands in his hair, drawing little sounds, bub’s and hmmph’s from Steve’s lips. 

“Maybe it’s because you’re bi-lingual,” Billy suggested. Steve pulled a face as if he just took a sip of milk that hadn't _quite_ gone bad but definitely passed its time.

“No…” There was a long pause. “It’s like- none of _any_ words are mine, no matter what language. They’re always borrowed. Words are just- like my fingers are too long. And I don’t know where they are going.” Billy stayed awfully quiet.

“Whatever,” Steve sighed. “You don’t get it.”

Unless it was strictly necessary, words were a tool that Steve’s tongue shied away from, largely out of fear that he might look stupid. It didn’t help that he made… sounds. _Stupid_ sounds that were not words, that didn’t even _mean_ anything. Most of the time he didn’t even notice when he was doing it.

“Was that you or do you have a canary in your pocket?” Robin had asked one day while Steve was restocking the shelves at Family Video. Steve turned bright red and mumbled something inaudible as he buried his face in a box of new releases. Anytime it happened, anytime someone laughed or commented on his little blips, Steve wanted the floor to swallow him whole. 

Billy was well aware of these verbal tics. Actually, he thought it was pretty cute when Steve was babbling to himself. At first, Steve would still get this wide-eyed look any time he got ‘caught’ vocalizing. But as they grew more comfortable around each other and Steve was somewhat assured that Billy wouldn’t make fun of him, more sounds came out, sounds Steve never made in public. Then one day, around two months of them living together, he started making the sounds _at_ Billy.

“Bibbip?” Steve called, perched on the sofa with a comic in his lap. Billy let out an inquisitive hum before he looked up from his math textbook. Steve’s face remained blank, like maybe he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say next.

“Gurp.”

Billy lifted a brow. “Gurp?” Steve nodded, lips drawn between his teeth.

“Gurp,” he repeated, eyes still focussed in on Billy. 

“Alright,” Billy chuckled, a little nervous but mostly amused.  
“Gurp to you, too.” 

Something happened then, when suddenly a wide grin spread across Steve’s face. Still smiling, a little flustered even, he returned to his pages. Billy’s eyes lingered, brow pinched, amused and puzzled by what had just happened.

Whatever ‘gurp’ was, Steve seemed to like it. Or maybe it was just the act of repeating the nonsense back to Steve that made him smile. Talking back to him in his own language so to speak. Or maybe it wasn’t even about _what_ they said but about saying _something_ , anything. Maybe Steve just found it easier to connect without systems of meaning getting in the way.

So Billy started a little experiment. Whenever Steve made a sound, Billy said something back. In some cases that seemed to work. The back and forth often ended in some sort of surrealist dialogue where they both kept trying to one-up the other with increasingly ridiculous sounds, which always ended in an uncontrollable laughing fit.

But at other times, Steve seemed thrown off by Billy’s response. He’d give a curt reply and get back to what he was doing. Two weeks into this trail, when Billy had just produced a string of kh-kh-kh-kh, Steve blurted: “I wasn’t talking to you.” 

Billy blinked. “Uuh, okay,” he chuckled.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be harsh,” Steve said, shoulders drawn. “It’s just that ermm… I mean I know you don’t mean it that way but sometimes it feels like you’re mocking me...” 

“Oh,” Billy swallowed. “No… not at all, I just thought we were having fun. I thought you liked it.” 

Steve chewed on his lip for a while before he replied.

“I think… there are times when I’m kinda trying to get your attention, like- I just wanna say hi, I guess. But most of the time I’m just- being a 24h weird sound radio station,” he uttered as he toyed with a loose string on his shirt. “If I can help it, I’d rather not think about it too much.”

“Okay,” Billy nodded thoughtfully as he began to rearrange everything he thought he’d learned over the past few weeks. “So- which sound means ‘hi’ then?” Steve held Billy’s gaze for a moment, brows pinched.

“It’s not like that,” he stuttered. “It’s- it’s just sounds.”

They were just sounds.

If that was really true, then why didn’t it feel that way? Around six months of living together, Billy got a feeling that ‘Prrrrpp’ and ‘hhmMmhpf’ meant _very_ different things. When Steve got really excited, for example, the sound usually had a rattle in it, something like a ‘kkrrrrrrararah’ or ‘nnghhrrrr’, topped off with a big fat grin and glittering eyes. The tics were not created equal. There were patterns. The only problem was that Billy couldn’t seem to figure out what they were.

His suspicions were confirmed one afternoon while Billy was preparing dinner. Steve shuffled into the kitchen, wearing one of Billy’s big old sweaters, the ones he’d worn during recovery, and hooked his chin into the crook of Billy’s neck. 

“HmmNAhh.” 

Steve had come over, so in theory, he should be up for a little chit-chat. And yet, he didn’t seem satisfied when Billy replied with a guttural sound of his own. Steve put more of his weight on Billy’s back. 

“Hmmnehrr.” Billy chuckled, had to flex his toes to support Steve’s weight on top of his own. He reached over his shoulder to give Steve’s messy hair a ruffle before he got back to his carrots. They stood like that for a moment longer before Steve _budded_ his head into Billy's shoulder with more force than he probably intended. The knife shot forward and missed Billy’s fingers by a hair. 

“Steve! What the fuck!” Billy yelled as he dropped the knife onto the cutting board. Steve retreated, pale from shock. 

“I could have lost a finger! What the fuck were you thinking!” Steve stared in horror and shame, hands retreating into the sleeves. The ‘sorry’ he produced was barely even audible. Billy’s shoulders slumped. 

“Why’d you do that?” Steve couldn’t look him in the eye, shoulders drawn up to his ears, guilty like a dog. 

‘I don’t know.’ 

Steve barely touched his food that night. After about 15 minutes of abhorrent silence, Billy put his fork down and said:  
“Do you still feel bad about what happened in the kitchen or is there something else?” 

What he didn’t say was: ‘TALK TO ME! FOR FUCKS SAKE _PLEASE_ HELP ME OUT HERE! TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT! USE YOUR WORDS _, JUST FOR ONCE!’_ But Steve didn’t budge. He averted his eyes. Still, his clenched jaw and trembling lip betrayed him. 

“Steve.” Something seemed to cave. Like a cardboard box collapsing in the rain, slow, wet, and anything but graceful. Steve curled into himself and produced a wounded squirm, the sound one makes when they have a very bad stomach ache. Billy picked himself up along with his chair and scooted over until he was as close to Steve as he would get. Billy knew these moods, when there was just Bad, Bad stacked up to the ceiling, drowning out all the senses. So full of Bad that it seemed to be eating at your skin.

“Babe, talk to me,” he whispered. Steve still couldn’t look at him, arms wound tightly around himself as another restrained squeal escaped him. 

“C’mere. Come.” and Billy gently urged Steve onto his lap where the guy wound his arms around Billy’s neck. His chest was heaving as he tried his best to keep the worst of his crying inside. 

Billy squeezed Steve’s thigh and whispered: “Let go.” and through another squirm broke a deep aching sob, the type that once it starts rolling doesn’t seem to stop.  
“Breathe, dear.” Steve struggled to regain his breath through the bursts of tears as Billy shushed him with a gentle hand on his back. A muffled 'I'm sorry' sounded through the fabric of Billy's shirt. 

“You know I’m not mad at you, right?” Billy murmured into Steve’s hair, which was soft and feathery and always smelled like coming home. And Steve nodded into Billy’s chest, still shivering. 

“Not to say that you should be trying to wrestle me when I’m holding a knife, but I’m not gonna stay mad about little things like that. I love you just as much, even when you’re being a weirdo, you know that right?” Steve managed to laugh past his tears for a moment and nodded again. 

“Good,” Billy said as he pressed a long kiss to Steve’s hair. He held his boy, softly swaying him until the worst of it was over and Steve’s tense body felt boneless in his arms. 

“You had a long shift, didn’t you?” Steve’s nod was so small that Billy could barely feel the movement of it.

“Annoying customers?” Nod.

“Did that one dad come nagging you about age labels again?” Nod.

“Oh, fucking hell. And did Keith give you shit for it?” _Firm nod._ Billy let out an empathic sigh as he squeezed Steve extra close. 

He reassured Steve that he did nothing wrong, that Keith was a dingbat, and that Steve should be crowned a marter for putting up with the guy’s bullshit. That last one even managed to draw a laugh out of Steve. Billy brought the plates over to the couch and let Steve eat his dinner in front of the tv, comfortably poised between Billy’s thighs. When the plate was empty and put away, Steve settled deeper into Billy’s embrace. He was an absolute sucker for a good firm hug. 

When at the start of their relationship Steve had nervously admitted that he wasn’t all that interested in sex, that it was almost like a chore to him, Billy had worried that he would miss the physical affection that came with a relationship. What he didn’t know yet, was that Steve’s lack of sexual appetite directly translated to an insatiable hunger for hugs and kisses. If Billy let him, Steve could spend hours in Billy’s lap while the latter did homework or played video games, whatever was keeping him busy. If it was up to Steve, he would be plastered to Billy’s side all day long. Billy certainly wasn’t used to this much affection, but he certainly didn’t complain. Steve's cuddle bug seemed to be infectious.

As the movie was coming to its end, he started playing his Steve’s hair again, combing it back into a ponytail, scratching at the nape while Steve produced a constant stream of content little hums until at some point, Billy laughed.

“Are you _purring?_ ” he chuckled as he squeezed Steve’s shoulders playfully. “Are you actually a cat? Is that why you’re always trying to climb in my lap when I’m trying to get shit done?” Steve squirmed playfully as he wiggled in between Billy's arms until he felt comfortable again. They sat like that for a little longer, Steve blinking slowly and purring while Billy played hairstylist.

“This is what you wanted, right?” Billy said after a while. “You just needed a hug.” Steve didn’t reply, not in words. That was okay. Who needs words anyway. Sometimes a simple ‘hhmpf’ can be enough.

Billy decided that it was time for a new model. Maybe Steve had been onto something when he called himself a radio station. He wasn't just broadcasting gibberish, he was sharing his moods, be it in an unconventional way. Billy's _theorem of emotive voalisation_ consisted of four subcategories.

The tummy-ache-sounds would be a good fundament to build the new theorem, Billy decided. He jotted those squirms down as ‘I am upset, potentially on the verge of crying’, which seemed to cover it for now. Steve wasn’t upset all that much but when he was, he didn’t seem too eager to share them with Billy directly, which made it hard to gather data. Billy made a mental note that if he heard an ‘I am upset’-sound, that it called for immediate action. Hugs, kisses, the likes. Those wimpers were the sound of someone trying to keep it together when they really want to break down. All Billy had to do, he figured, was make Steve feel safe enough to do so.

‘I am excited’-sounds were pretty self-evident by the facial expressions they came with. It didn’t really ask for any direct action from Billy’s part except to maybe reciprocate the excitement. These were usually high pitched and paired with something Steve had dubbed ‘happy shakes’. 

The next category was much harder to define because it was by far the largest.

After careful observation, Billy concluded that most ‘round’ sounds such as ‘u’s and ‘a’s paired with ‘b’, ‘g’ or ‘p’ seemed to be a sign that Steve was in a good mood. When Steve was engrossed in a task, when he was swaddled up in a blanket, when he’d just had a good meal he would produce these repetitive noises that came mostly from the front of the mouth, things like bup-bup-buh-buh’, gup-gup, duh-duh-duh-duh. They weren’t very attractive sounds, but the fact that they came from Steve, that they were sometimes so quiet that you could barely make them out, made them pretty adorable.

Those were the sounds Steve made when they were cuddled up when they spend long mornings in bed. They were the signs that Steve seemed to feel comfortable. Billy almost choked up at the realization that Steve’s nickname for him, Bibbip, was entirely made of comfort sounds. 

The real breakthrough happened when Billy cracked the ‘I need affection’-sounds. Those sat lower in the throat and were often nasal with a lot of air. Sometimes Steve would come over to him, clingy with big brown eyes and a jutted bottom lip. He’d drape himself over the back of Billy’s desk chair and let out little ‘hngah’s and ‘hhmmeh’s from the back of his throat. 

Billy used to give him a little scratch behind the ear and move on until one afternoon, without even thinking about it, he rolled his chair back, spread his legs and patted the space he’d freed up. He’d never forget the way Steve’s hesitant eyes lit up. How the comfort poured out as soon as he took his place between Billy’s thighs, back nesting against Billy’s chest while he tried to finish his reading. 

Billy realized that he was not only beginning to learn Steve’s native language, he could talk back in it. He could respond to the things Steve was telling him. 

So when Steve curled up against Billy in the morning, purring into his chest, Billy didn’t have to see Steve’s face to know he was smiling, to feel his cheeks pucker as he dug his nose into Billy’s chest. He didn’t have to hear the little ‘gup’s when he could feel Steve’s lips against his skin. 

Steve didn’t have to say what he meant when it was always there, right under Billy’s nose. Billy squeezed his boy a little tighter. 

“And I gup-gup you, too, idiot.” He whispered as he pressed a sloppy kiss on top of Steve’s head.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted add something that isn't really important for the story but it feels weird not to mention it in some shape or form. 
> 
> This is what autism looks like for me, at least in part. I don't really headcanon Steve as autistic but in this ficlet I projected a lot of my own experience onto him. I wanted to mention it because autistic people are often represented as stoic and non-cooperative when actually, we work really hard to make ourselves clear but it just feels like no one is speaking our language and we constantly forced to use systems that we'll never quite master. There is a lot of frustration that comes with that, feeling misunderstood, feeling like people underestimate you, won't take you seriously or even question your humanity. 
> 
> If you have an autistic person in your life, just know that they are probably very aware that they are an inconvenience to others and they are trying very hard not to be most of the time. It's not our way or the highway, but it's nice if someone speaks to us in our language from time to time.


End file.
